


No Bounds

by thefudge



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: F/M, Fuckboy, Hamlet - Freeform, Mildly Dubious Consent, Shakespeare, Stabbing, Theater - Freeform, Uncle Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 19:12:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13770693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: He's got an obsession. With Shakespeare or you.





	No Bounds

**Author's Note:**

> This is my waaay too artsy, way too fucking Extra response to this Tumblr post: "Where are all the fuckboi Erik Killmonger fics where I know he ain’t shit but I still leave the door unlocked so he can come over at 3 am and dick me down?"
> 
> Also, it's my official headcanon that Erik knows Shakespeare like the back of his hand. And come on, he IS hamlet.

**Claudius** : No place indeed should murther sanctuarize;

               Revenge should have no bounds. (Act IV, Scene 7)

 

***

You remember that John Everett Millait painting of Ophelia in the water. That’s what you’re going for, visually, as you slide into the green hammock below stage. You lift your hands weakly, as if you are not trying to break the water’s surface, but merely appreciating your own cruel fate.

 _This is what I’ve been reduced to_ , Ophelia seems to say. So that’s what you say.

Of course, this is just rehearsal, so you don’t have to channel your entire energy in the scene. Your eye slides by chance across the amphitheater and you almost jolt, making the hammock swing wildly.

You know that guy. Sitting in the back with a textbook on his lap and a pencil stuck in his locs.

He was here last week too. He doesn’t just come to the performances; he somehow wormed his way into rehearsals.

His beauty is kind of obscene. He’s so damn fine he must be some brand of psychopath underneath. No one that composed and hot is a drama-aficionado.

A good chunk of your audience is well past their prime. You don’t see a lot of young faces for _Unabridged Shakespeare_. That’s BPT (Boston Playwrights’ Theater)’s wild ambition for this season. To stage the Bard’s plays so faithfully that every damn nose itch and fart joke becomes quintessential for the viewing experience.

Which is why  a) every representation lasts almost four hours and b) these fools expect you to lie in this hammock below stage for roughly thirty minutes until Ophelia’s body is discovered.

Yeah, this is real commitment. Thank God you love this shit.

You’d love it more if the suspiciously hot nerd in the back got up and left. He’s making you sweat through your T-shirt and the last thing you need is to make yourself more uncomfortable.

 

 

Everyone milling about outside bums a smoke from him.  Hot guy is generous that way. Actors are notorious for their nicotine habits and your troupe is no exception. Hot guy lights Larisa’s cigarette with a wry, cold smile and Larisa fucking melts. Even Andreas, who’s a macho giant with testosterone for days, is flustered to be around this dude’s aura. Because he has some kind of weird energy about him and you…you know better than to let it sway you. You had an uncle like that. One time, he bit into his wife’s cheek until he removed some flesh.

You don’t smoke, so that makes it easy. You lean against the brick wall and text your roommate, reminding her to put the milk in the fridge, cuz last time you found it on the kitchen counter.

When you’re done, you lift your eyes and see him standing in front of you. He exhales smoke like a dragon. Damn his finesse. He doesn’t say anything to you, doesn’t even actually look _at_ you. It’s like his eyes roam in your vicinity, but you’re not the focal point.

You’re relieved and insulted and you suddenly crave a cigarette. Luckily, Andreas grabs you by the shoulders and steers you through the backdoor cuz your director is screaming murder.

 

 

You cling to Hamlet’s back. He stomps across the stage, raging at you, but you won’t release him. The director told you it’s _you_   who actually has the power in this scene. Hamlet’s the one making a fool of himself.

You hope that you’re conveying the sway you have over the Prince. You lean your head against his back and squeeze his waist until your knuckles turn pale. You can feel his belly beneath your fingers. Jimmy’s put on weight. You picture clawing into him, shredding his liver to pieces.

Fuck, you gotta stop letting your imagination run wild during rehearsal. You’re not method or anything, but you like to enter a certain headspace when you’re playing Ophelia.

“Jesus, are you trying to give me permanent scars?” Jimmy hisses, untangling himself from your grasp.

 _Oops_ , you squeezed too tight.

You stand in the center of the stage and the hot guy is sitting in the fourth row this time, elbows perched on his knees. Looking at you or _through_ you. He’s got this cocky smile at the corner of his lips. Like he knows what you were thinking.

You turn away and give him the middle finger behind your back.

 

 

You’ve never liked being watched. When you accidentally lock eyes with a stranger, you want to sink into the pavement. You became an actress _in spite of_ this stifling phobia. On the stage, the lights render everyone in the audience invisible. It’s a reprieve from the real world.

But during a ‘bedchamber’ scene when the lights are dimmed, you see the reflection of his glasses in second row.  

And you sink your head in your chin, staring at the shadow on your throat.

 

 

Rehearsals again. Laertes grabs your chin half-affectionately, telling you to stop mooning over Hamlet, he’s not worth your time.

You clasp your fingers around his wrist and lower his hand slowly.

“No more but so?” you ask, because you think Hamlet’s attentions aren’t just empty flirtation.

But the director stops the both of you. Something’s off. He says you both sound like children, like you’re teasing each other about some trifle, when hey, it’s the fucking Prince of Denmark.

The next time Laertes grabs your chin, you swat his hand impatiently and your smile is nervous, frayed.

But it’s still not good, apparently.

“You,” the director calls out in the audience. Hot guy is lounging in the third row, arms stretched out on the seats around him. “Could you come up here and give us a hand?”

Hot guy points at his chest, but he doesn’t seem surprised. He's got this raw magnetism; everyone wants to make him their center.

He struts towards the stage with the grace of a feline.

“Now, if you could stand over here…and say these lines…” the director instructs amiably, but hot guy pushes the script away.

“I know the lines,” he says confidently, staring at you.

When he grabs your chin, you feel chills.

“And sister, as the winds give benefit, And convey is assistant, do not sleep, But let me hear from you.”

His diction is both choppy and delicate, precise and a little off-kilter. Cali guy for sure.

“Do you doubt that?” you ask and there’s a blade under your tongue.

He steps forward and turns your head sideways.

“For Hamlet and the trifling of his favor, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute. No more.”

His breath falls on the side of your jaw. The words reflect on Hamlet’s fickleness, but the voice is honeyed, almost _inviting_ you to sin with the Prince. So that afterwards, he can swoop in and tell you he was _right_. He knows you so well.

But he’s just a stranger.  

You wrench your head away. “No more but so?”

And it’s pretty perfect. No more but so.

 

 

Everyone is impressed with him backstage, your audience-cum-understudy. Who knows every line like it's a lullaby. Just in case, he told the director he’s available for any emergency-substitutions.

And you already feel bad for Lukas, who plays Laertes.

Cuz something is bound to happen to him. Theater folk are superstitious.

Hot guy is smart, which you already knew. He’s cocky, but not cocky enough to try and steal Hamlet’s part. At least not right away.

You _have_ to introduce yourself after your little back-and-forth on stage.

“Erik,” he slides his name into your palm. He squeezes your fingers with enough presence that you’ll feel it later.

“What do you do, Erik? Besides sabotage Shakespeare productions.”

He grins, so many secrets folded in the creases of his smile. “Not a whole lot, actually.”

 _Bullshit_ , you think.

 

 

( _The perfume and suppliance of a minute,_ that's what Laertes likens Hamlet with.  The words flit through your head as Erik hovers over your shoulder, tapping the page of your script with his finger. He smells like the perfume of a minute. He's giving you advice on how to say your lines. The fucking snob. "You gotta tighten your gut, sweetheart. You sound dead before your time." And he flattens his palm against your abdomen, burrowing his fist into the skin, hurting you without hurting)

 

 

You button up your dress with deft fingers. And you do a little twirl in front of the mirror. You love this blue confection; you love the feel of the fabric against your thighs. You even love the goddamn stays even though they’re squeezing your breasts mercilessly.

He coughs from the door frame.

Your turn around, scalded by your own enthusiasm. Getting into costume is always exciting for you, but you probably look ridiculous.

“Missed a button," he drawls. 

He doesn’t wait for an invitation. He walks up to you and slips his fingers against the velvet buttons. Unbuttoning them.  

You look at him over your shoulder.

“What are you doing? I have to be out there in ten minutes –”

“So stop me,” he cuts you off, as if you’ve missed several of your lines and he’s already moved on to another scene. He straps down your dress with unhurried movements, already reaching for the stays.

“ _No_ ,” you shake your head.

And you can almost taste his disappointment, can feel him departing, losing interest.

You lean into him slightly. “The stays stay.” You like the pun. Maybe you only agree to this because it feels like you get to decide.

Erik smirks. “I can work with that.”

And he bends you over the dressing table.

Just like that.

If you thought he was a face-to-face kind of guy, you were wrong. But what the hell, you’re already wet, there’s little point denying it when he’s already got two digits inside of you and – _fuck_.

You stare in the mirror and you notice he’s looking too.  You both absorb your reflections as he sinks his cock inside you.

And you can’t look away. 

He thrusts inside you like you got more than five minutes until you gotta be on stage. He thrusts inside you like he's gonna get you fired. 

But you both make it on time - you breathless and wet, him, beautiful and unperturbed. 

 

 

Lukas gets a mysterious stomach bug the night before the fourth performance.

You hear his straggled voice on the phone. “Shit, I must’ve eaten something rotten…”

You look across the stage at Erik who is pacing back and forth, rehearsing his lines, his shoulders a straight, controlled line.

“Yeah, something rotten,” you say.

Erik brushes up against you, one of his fingers tilting your chin up.

“Get ready, sweetheart.”

And this warning isn’t just for tonight. You can feel it in your bones.  

 

 

Jimmy’s tongue swells so hard he has to be taken to the ER. He’s allergic to crayfish but somehow, he ingested a _considerable_ amount of crayfish in the last five minutes. He doesn’t know how. The only thing he ordered at the bar was a gin n tonic. Andreas was with him, he can confirm.

You were there too, but you were checking out the jukebox, and you feel stupid now. You should’ve been guarding everyone’s drinks. Except Erik was nowhere in sight. How did he pull this stunt?

It doesn’t matter, cuz your Hamlet is lying on a gurney the night before the sixth performance.

Erik strolls into the waiting room and sits down next to you. He leans towards you, his lips next to your ear.

“Is he gonna be okay, you think?”

You’d like to spit into his face. You want to bite into his cheek until you remove flesh.

But instead you curl your fist into his chest. “You better know your fucking lines.”

He grins that shit-eating grin, the one he was wearing the night he fingered you in his car and you knocked your head against the ceiling. And you nursed that bump for three fucking days, thinking of the way his teeth sucked on your pulse like a fucking vampire.

“Do you doubt that?” he throws Ophelia’s line into your face.

 

 

Showtime. You hope he pans hard.

(You hope he makes you kneel again, like he did after rehearsals, when he said you should suck his dick for good luck and you did it because you’re resentful as a rule, and you don’t half-ass things. And you enjoyed it, even though at the last moment, he made you get up and held you against the cabin door as he came inside you and you had to cram your fist in your mouth)

He’s electric as Hamlet. Scratch that, not just electric. He fucking _blows_ up the stage, fills it up with his pointless, teeth-gnashing rage.

He grips you to him and tells you, in the Bard’s language, to go fuck yourself and then he kisses you hard, making your makeup smudge.

You feel high.

But you’re not the main entertainment tonight.

No, you realize halfway through the show, that he coveted this role for someone else.

You’re lying in your hammock under the stage, dead, with your hands half-raised, when you hear the gasps in the audience.

Shit, he’s that good, huh?

But then you hear the piercing screams on stage. The loudest one erupts from Andreas, the strapping, burly Claudius. You can hear his large body fall with a great thud.

“That’s what you deserve for killing my father,” you hear Erik howl, completely off-script and out of character.

Moments pass in eerie immobility. No one in the audience dares to do a goddamn thing.

A shadow falls across your hammock. Erik stands on the edge of the stage, his costume sprayed with fresh, black blood. His fists are clenched around a blade that looks like it cuts deep. No stage-prop for him.

And it's eerie, but that looks like the Teflon knife you hold on a cutting board in your kitchen. 

He stares down at you with an eerie smile.

Your hands are raised towards him, pleading. But maybe beckoning below.

He lowers himself in the hammock and he lies down next to you. In your arms actually.

The blood sticks to you like a second skin.

For a moment, you think he will sink that blade in your chest, but he puts his head on your stays and hums a soft song under his breath.

You hold him, your eyes going glassy with the effort not to blink. 

You’re fucking committed. You’re gonna stay this way until someone removes him from you.

 

 

(It's 3 AM before the big show. You leave your door unlocked because he comes over sometimes. Doesn't spoon with you, doesn't watch Netflix with you. Although, okay, sometimes he'll eat cereals with you.

Mostly he fucks you till the back of your thighs have carpet burns and you're dehydrated as fuck. You almost don't let him go down on you cuz he doesn't know he's got teeth like a shark. 

But tonight, he's not going to do any of that.

Tonight, he pulls the covers over you. He tucks you in, and takes the knife from your kitchen.)


End file.
